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> The designer of bitcoin’s algorithm tried his damnest to emulate gold. Just like gold, which one presumes to be in fixed supply under the Earth’s surface, bit

by tromp 3y ago

> The designer of bitcoin’s algorithm tried his damnest to emulate gold. Just like gold, which one presumes to be in fixed supply under the Earth’s surface, bitcoin is also limited, artificially (through the design of its algorithm) to a plateau of 21 million units. Yet Bitcoin's emission is quite unlike that of gold. Every next generation gets to mine 32x less bitcoin. Over gold's millennia long history, every generation mines a roughly similar amount of gold as the next.

cmdrk 3y ago
perhaps similar in the amount of effort expended increasing to mine it out per generation?
- tromp 3y ago
  By design, emission is independent of mining effort (hence the difficulty adjustment mechanism).
hinkley 3y ago
I think you’ll find that if you plot the mines gold versus available gold you’ll see that the percent of new gold introduced is asymptotic. It’s true that he doubled down, but I also suspect he anticipated what actually happened, which was that the price of bitcoin spurred custom hardware, which ramped up the capacity to mine coins past what Moore’s Law would have predicted. It also ruined PC gaming for the lower- and middle-middle class for a few years. Whether that’s prescient or just an artifact of a logarithmic drop off in the available key space is anyone’s guess. I don’t fix problems I don’t see as problems that often, and most of my peers are even worse.
- tromp 3y ago
  > logarithmic drop off in the available key space What do you mean by that? The key space is either 2^160 for hashed keys, or about 2^256 for unhashed or Schnorr keys. The number of keys appearing on-chain is not limited by emission but by the block size limit of 4M weight units (each new key contributing a few hundred weight units).
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - hinkley 3y ago
    > Every next generation mines 32x less bitcoin Keys discovered versus keys remaining is a logarithmic curve.
    - tromp 3y ago
      When you say keys, do you mean coins?
  - garba_dlm 3y ago
    so you're saying that there are more bitcoin that there are bitcoin addresses/wallets??? (more precisely you might be saying how it happens that which I'm asking if that's what you're saying happens.... I mean I'm asking my question because I'm a bit confounded)
Gibbon1 3y ago
Keynes' comment about gold is always pertinent. Murdered Quote Warning: One might as well seal paper money inside bottles and bury them in disused coal mines for people to dig up. Bitcoin is exactly that. Even better you don't even need to bury the stuff.
- hinkley 3y ago
  It’s all buried in soot. Mining is not free. You have to dig to the bottom of a big pile of fossil fuels to find one.
hudon 3y ago
We can change Bitcoin's code to keep emitting beyond 21 million units. The consensus isn't there, yet, but nothing physical is preventing that from ever happening... Bitcoin's supply limit is a policy (ie. political), not a physical limit.

by tromp 3y ago

cmdrk 3y ago

perhaps similar in the amount of effort expended increasing to mine it out per generation?

tromp 3y ago
By design, emission is independent of mining effort (hence the difficulty adjustment mechanism).

hinkley 3y ago

I think you’ll find that if you plot the mines gold versus available gold you’ll see that the percent of new gold introduced is asymptotic. It’s true that he doubled down, but I also suspect he anticipated what actually happened, which was that the price of bitcoin spurred custom hardware, which ramped up the capacity to mine coins past what Moore’s Law would have predicted. It also ruined PC gaming for the lower- and middle-middle class for a few years. Whether that’s prescient or just an artifact of a logarithmic drop off in the available key space is anyone’s guess. I don’t fix problems I don’t see as problems that often, and most of my peers are even worse.

tromp 3y ago
> logarithmic drop off in the available key space What do you mean by that? The key space is either 2^160 for hashed keys, or about 2^256 for unhashed or Schnorr keys. The number of keys appearing on-chain is not limited by emission but by the block size limit of 4M weight units (each new key contributing a few hundred weight units).
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- hinkley 3y ago
  > Every next generation mines 32x less bitcoin Keys discovered versus keys remaining is a logarithmic curve.
  - tromp 3y ago
    When you say keys, do you mean coins?
- garba_dlm 3y ago
  so you're saying that there are more bitcoin that there are bitcoin addresses/wallets??? (more precisely you might be saying how it happens that which I'm asking if that's what you're saying happens.... I mean I'm asking my question because I'm a bit confounded)

Gibbon1 3y ago

Keynes' comment about gold is always pertinent. Murdered Quote Warning: One might as well seal paper money inside bottles and bury them in disused coal mines for people to dig up. Bitcoin is exactly that. Even better you don't even need to bury the stuff.

hinkley 3y ago
It’s all buried in soot. Mining is not free. You have to dig to the bottom of a big pile of fossil fuels to find one.

hudon 3y ago

We can change Bitcoin's code to keep emitting beyond 21 million units. The consensus isn't there, yet, but nothing physical is preventing that from ever happening... Bitcoin's supply limit is a policy (ie. political), not a physical limit.